


Looking Outward Together

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, past Sawyer/Kate, pre-Sawyer/Juliet, set after 5x4 The Little Prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28483023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: She says his name in her sleep, and Sawyer realizes it's time to move on.
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Looking Outward Together

Looking Outward Together  
by eponine119  
November 11, 2020

She says his name in her sleep. 

The sound rouses Sawyer from his half-sleep, thinking she's talking to him, trying to get his attention. “Hmm?” he murmurs, opening his eyes, raising on to one elbow. Juliet is fast asleep on the beach, curled on one side, facing him. Her eyes are closed and there's a faint smile touching her lips. She's less than an arm's length away. 

Something like a chill raises the hair on his arms. It's dark. The sky hasn't flashed again, and the night is colder than the day was. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, with everything else lost to time, and their clothes are still damp from the storm that broke over them on the ocean, when time shifted and saved them from whoever the hell was shooting at them from the other outrigger. 

He thinks about how exposed he felt out there, and how she came to his rescue, again. Working as a team: him, paddling with his stronger arms and her, shooting past him with her expert eye and reflexes. 

Sawyer sighs and looks at her. She has one hand resting underneath her cheek. She's different like this, soft and vulnerable, with her eyes closed. He hasn't really given her much thought as a person, a human being who sleeps and eats and has constant thoughts running through her head just like he does. He thinks she must be dreaming, and he wonders what she's dreaming about. 

He knows what he heard. 

His name, soft and low, from her lips. 

A sudden longing floods through him. He wants to reach out and touch her. She's right there. He could, if he wanted to. Soft skin over hard bone, warm and alive and responsive. He wants to brush back the curls that have come loose from her ponytail. Her sky-blue eyes would open with confusion at first, and find his... and then what? 

He sighs again and wonders if she's warm enough. If he had a blanket, he'd drape it over her, but they don't have a damn thing. It was too dark to sort through the wreckage strewn on the beach from whatever the hell “Besixdouze” was before the island destroyed it. 

Wanting to take care of her makes him look away. 

The geeks from the freighter are several yards away, all asleep as far as he can tell. Down beyond his feet, Locke is sitting up, awake. Sawyer accidentally meets his eyes and then looks away fast, but he knows the old guy sees him. Knows that he's awake. Nothing much gets past him, and it's one of the many things about Locke that Sawyer doesn't like. 

At least Locke doesn't call out to him, or get up to come over. He stays where he's been sitting, watching the ocean. Maybe watching Sawyer now. 

So Sawyer shouldn't turn his head and look at Juliet again, but he does. He can look at her all he wants right now. He remembers how in the canoe he was staring hard at her back and she turned around to look at him curiously, like he was looking hard enough for her to feel it. He'd looked away, ashamed at being caught. 

He wishes she'd murmur his name again, just to see what it sounds like when he's listening. When it isn't half-heard, unexpected, pulling him from a dozy kind of rest. 

Sawyer stretches out again, cradling his head in the bend of his elbow, and it makes him realize how tired he is. He blinks heavily but opens his eyes again, still looking at her. 

He thinks about the feel of her shoulder against his in the darkness, both of them breathing fast and not just from the exertion of paddling the outrigger to shore. She asked him about Kate, and she seemed to really want to hear his answer, and he still doesn't understand why. He told her, too, but not all of it. 

Seeing Kate again made him realize that she was really gone. Lost to time, if not more. 

He was on the island, being thrown around through time. Who even knows where or when he would wake up tomorrow. Kate was on the chopper, and whether it landed on the freighter before the explosion or somehow got away, she was gone. And she was never coming back. 

Maybe that's why he'd told Juliet. And hell, maybe Juliet had realized what was going on in his head and that's why she asked him, he doesn't rightly know. He thinks about how she looked at him, like she cared. How he'd looked back, and his gaze had dipped to her mouth. He might have done something about it, had he not seen the smear of fresh blood from her nose, black in the moonlight and shocking against her pale skin. 

Sawyer exhales softly, letting himself imaging it, just for a second. Her lips, cold against his from the storm and salty from the sea. They are in the past, but Juliet is the future.

He closes his eyes. In his memory, Juliet says his name again, and he smiles with the secret knowledge that she must have been dreaming of him. He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but he does. 

(end)


End file.
